A normal user's look into the world of 3D Stereo Technologies

The MPO Toolbox is a suite of four small applications solving various issues for owners of the stereoscopic 3D consumer digital camera Fujifilm FinePix REAL 3D W1. The author of the program is Jérôme Leens, Researcher at Université de Liège (ULg) who is distributing it for free. The MPO Toolbox is currently in its first version and is intended to be used under any version of the Microsoft Windows operating system (32 or 64 bit). The software package contains a few very simple to use tools that will help you manage the MPO (Multi-Picture Object) stereo 3D pictures you get when shooting with the Fujifilm 3D camera…

The MPO Toolbox contains four programs that are quite easy to use, you just need to drag and drop a MPO file over the certain tool to get it perform its action. The tool MPO2JPEGS converts one or more MPO files into pairs of left and right JPEG files and MPO2JPS creates single JPS file with the left and right frames in a Side by Side format. The MPO2ANAGLYPH creates anaglyph red-cyan images and the MPO2DUBOIS is an alternative that creates different anaglyph images from MPO with the colors of the original picture being modified in order to reduce the brightness difference between left and right images for the red objects that are difficult to perceive in 3D with the standard anaglyph method.

It seems that Nvidia has done a bit of a silent update to the requirements for using GeForce 3D Vision for some tasks. Of course for gaming and 3D applications such as CoolIris you still need to have a high end GPU, but if you plan to primarily play 3D Stereo images or 3D Stereo movies on your 3D Vision you can now go for a low end GeForce 8 or 9-series video card and you should not have any problems. This is a good news for Nvidia ION-based solutions that come with GeForce 9400M video, which along with their smaller sizes and low power consumption makes them a great addition to 3D Vision for watching 3D pictures and movies. The only problem you might face with these ION-based systems is the lack of DVI output for connecting directly to a Samsung 2233RZ (if you have bigger 3D-ready TV you might be Ok) and using an adapter to convert form one type of digital output to another still might bring problems. And I’m talking about having problems with all of the first ION-based PCs such as Acer Apsire Revo R3600, AsRock ION 330 or even the very slim and tiny Pegatron Cape 7. They all have HDMI outputs which you can easily convert to DVI with the help of a special conversion adapter, but the result will not be what you expect. By using the conversion adapter from HDMI to DVI you won’t be able to set the Samsung 2233RZ display to work with more than 60 Hz refresh rate and you still need at least 100 Hz. So before thinking of some great idea combining ION system with 3D Vision for viewing 3D Stereo movies and images you better check things a bit and then decide it if is going to be Ok.